


gunpowder, gelatine

by piggy09



Series: Keyframes [1]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:30:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3522458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Lunch</i>, Sarah thinks. She can’t be serious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gunpowder, gelatine

**Author's Note:**

> [warnings: abuse mention, brief mention of Helena’s self-harm scars]

_Lunch_ , Sarah thinks. She can’t be serious. But, no: there are Sarah’s earnest eyes, Sarah’s earnest hands wringing beneath the sleeves of that shitty green parka. Sarah stabbed this woman in the liver days ago, and now she wants to go out on a date.

“ _Lunch?_ ” she says, to be sure. She hopes the word comes out as incredulous as she feels.

“Yes,” says Helena, eyes so wide it looks like it hurts. She doesn’t explain herself any more than that, just dances from foot to foot, eyes flicking to Sarah and back again. Sarah wants to laugh in her face and walk away, but Sarah was going to _Kira_ and the thought that this sad patchwork version of her would dog her steps to her daughter makes her sick.

Helena can’t be allowed to get near Kira. Not ever. Sarah knows that’ll go wrong, get Kira hurt, get Kira killed.

And, more importantly: she can’t afford to piss Helena off. Sarah _stabbed_ her and here she is, hopeful as a puppy; Sarah honestly doesn’t know a better way to stop her. Shit, maybe she can get on Helena’s good side somehow. Or – more on her good side than she already is. Less knee groping, more promises to not kill anyone.

“Fine,” Sarah says, thinking fast – there’s a cheap diner near here, she buys Helena a donut, serial killer pacified, still time to visit Kira. She fumbles for Paul’s keys and clicks a button, hears the answering chirp from the looming vehicle next to her. “Come on.”

Helena looks at the car with her mouth open, and Sarah wants to say, _you act like you’ve never been in a car before_. But that’s something you say to a friend, not…Helena.

Sarah gets in the driver’s seat, pretends this is normal and that Helena doesn’t either want to kill her or lick her. She fumbles the keys into the ignition, hears the sound of the door opening and closing and the slithering sound of Helena’s fabric against the seat. There’s a displeased noise from Helena and Sarah looks to see her trying to get her feet onto the dashboard.

“Hey,” Sarah says, sharp, “don’t do that,” and Helena jolts, looks at Sarah with those same wide eyes. But she takes her feet off the dashboard.

“Where are we going,” she asks in a voice like rust. Her eyes are looking all around the car and she jumps when Sarah starts it, the sound of the engine a sudden droning roar. Sarah thinks about telling Helena to put her seatbelt on, but maybe they’ll get in a car crash and she’ll die.

The fact that the thought is comforting is a sign of how strange and awful her life has become.

“That would spoil the surprise,” Sarah mutters, backing out of the space, out of the garage, onto the road. She really doesn’t want to die. That’s not something you think about often, but Sarah’s thinking it with each abnormally-loud breath out of Helena’s mouth: _I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die._

It’s a long drive, like that. Sarah feels like a live wire. It doesn’t help that partway through Helena starts humming weird jagged bits of a song, probably in some sad attempt to get Sarah to pay attention to her; Sarah can feel Helena’s eyes on her, practically begging Sarah to turn around and make eye contact. _Not happening_ , she thinks. Taps one, two fingers on the wheel. It’s irritating, but the song sounds familiar – like something she knew once, a long long time ago.

Abruptly she needs out of the car. She’s too close to Helena, in too many ways – her brain is starting to whisper _well isn’t she like you_ in a way it hadn’t done for Alison or Cosima or – Beth.

Maybe it’s because Helena is so obviously afraid. That’s something Sarah knows. Cosima is clever and Alison is paranoid but – Sarah’s been with enough boyfriends who hit her to recognize the way Helena keeps jumping. And she doesn’t want to think about that. Helena could have any of them dead soon, could go after Kira, and Sarah can’t think about how that twisted map of scars could have gotten onto Helena’s back.

So. She swerves into what she’s pretty sure is a space – hope she doesn’t get ticketed, but she can’t bring herself to care – and barks, “Out.”

Obligingly, Helena slithers out of the car. Her lips are sucked between her teeth and Sarah can’t stop noticing that she looks afraid. Shit. _Shit!_ Sarah pulls up anger like a cloak and reminds herself she just has to get through this, get Helena’s…offer…and then they can go their separate ways and Helena won’t be her _problem_ anymore.

She starts walking towards the diner. Helena hovers by her right hand, like a knife waiting to be used. She stays there the whole time, not saying a word – Sarah’s not sure if Helena’s breathing, could forget Helena was there if it wasn’t for the _danger! danger! danger!_ warning shaking up and down her spine. Helena shadows her to the diner, through the door, and just when Sarah’s afraid Helena’s going to press herself up against Sarah in the booth Helena takes the other side.

Sarah flips over the shitty laminated menu at this shitty downtown diner, looks at the pancakes and the chicken and decides she’s not hungry. Across the table Helena is tracing her finger down the menu, reverently, the way her fingers had sketched across Sarah’s knee and Sarah really needs to stop remembering that, Helena’s hands around her hands around the gun. Doesn’t want to bring it up, have Helena remember that, right, she’s here to kill Sarah, because Sarah is a sinless abomination.

“Just – order whatever you want,” Sarah mutters. Slouches lower in the booth, plants her feet, remembers strength.

“Anything,” Helena whispers, and Sarah shuts her eyes tightly for a second and says, “Yeah, why not.”

When the waitress comes by Sarah learns _why not_ : the answer is that Helena’s either got a family of stray cats living in the pockets of her jacket or she has a bottomless pit for a stomach – and Sarah’s got her biology, so she doesn’t think it’s the second one. She thinks about Alison’s defense fund with an edge of hysteria as Helena works her way down the menu. _That’s_ a hell of a conversation: explaining to a suburban soccer mom that Sarah spent her coupon-clipping, bingo-winning cash on pancakes and – weirdly enough – Jell-O. Yeah, Alison, I’m keeping you safe for _sure._

“That’s a lot of food, honey,” says the waitress. “You and your sister gonna split?”

There’s a silence like a knife blade pressing against your lips, cold and sharp and sudden. Then Sarah laughs, short panicked bark, and says, “What’s family for.” She smiles with tightly-pressed lips until the waitress takes the hint and goes. Sarah watches her walk away, doesn’t look at Helena. _Family_ , Sarah thinks.

“Family,” Helena says, Sarah’s voice and Sarah’s words but not Sarah. She pauses, continues thoughtfully. “You lied. You said we were sisters.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Sarah says, turning back in the booth so they’re mirrored again. “A face doesn’t make a family.”

For a second there is a silence, a hole between them shaped like the word _family._ The sound is as round as a gunshot wound, and – they’re not family. Sarah’s already got a family. But part of her is afraid Helena will lean across the booth and say _we_ should _be family_ , because Sarah doesn’t know what she’ll do if Helena does.

“You should eat something,” says Helena matter-of-factly, breaking the silence. “Whatever you want.” Sarah’s words sound strange in her mouth. She probably barely knows what they _mean_.

“Yeah, I’m fine, thanks,” Sarah says. “You gonna tell me what you dragged us here for?”

“No,” says Helena bluntly. “First we eat.” She tilts her head and says, like the idea is confusing and strange, “Are you not _hungry?_ ”

“Not really,” Sarah says. “Guess you are, huh?”

“Always,” Helena breathes reverently. Her eyes gape open like mouths, eating Sarah whole. Sarah looks back, feeling helpless, crossing her arms tight to hug herself together. Helena just keeps staring; every now and then she breaks the silence, tries to say something, but Sarah’s not having it. The weather is nice today. Yeah, it’s great. I like your jacket. Thanks. When is the food coming? Soon. All the while Helena staring and staring. Maybe she thinks she can memorize Sarah. Maybe she thinks once she knows Sarah, she can kill her. Sarah really, desperately hopes it is not the latter. She uncrosses her arms and – without breaking eye contact, she thinks that’s something you shouldn’t do with predators – makes sure she knows where the knife is on the table. Just in case.

Helena’s gaze breaks when the food comes, plate after plate after plate cluttering the table. Pancakes and toast and eggs and a tall glass of orange juice and Helena is _beaming_ , looking like it’s Christmas and her birthday all rolled into one. Sarah forgot that her face could look like that, happy and achingly young.

Then Helena starts eating.

It is an experience.

She moves like a tornado through a small town, scattering things with no rhyme or reason; she picks up a pancake, folds it in half, and stuffs it into her mouth before moving on to cutting the next one into tiny pieces with a knife and fork. Slathers a knife with jam and sticks it in her mouth, pulling it out clean with gross sucking noises. If Sarah had actually ordered anything, she wouldn’t have any appetite left.

There goes a burger. Half the glass of orange juice follows it in one long slurp.

Holy shit.

She only starts slowing down after a pile of empty plates grows on the edge of the table, chicken bones and toast crusts. A waitress comes to take it away and Sarah smiles at her, tightly; the nauseating soundtrack of Helena eating stops for a second when Sarah does. When the waitress wanders off again Sarah turns to look at her double, raise her eyebrows in a silent _well?_

“You did not say that we were sisters,” Helena says, brow furrowed. She frowns at Sarah like Sarah has personally disappointed her – Sarah thinks Helena might actually be _pouting_.

“Guess not,” Sarah says.

Helena hums, a small grunt; she’s squirming in her seat, fork with a piece of bacon stuck on it dangling limply from her hand. She notices the bacon at the same time Sarah does, stuffs it into her mouth, swallows it whole.

“What is it called,” she continues, “if you are not sisters, but you go to lunch together?”

It’s called “you are a serial killer and I am afraid for my life and the lives of everyone else who looks like me,” but Sarah’s not going to say that. Across the table Helena mutters something to herself in a language Sarah doesn’t speak – _lyubleny_ or _lyublenie_ or something, Sarah’s shit with phonetics – and then twists her mouth and pulls the glass dish of Jell-O closer. Her fingers open and close on the glass, like they want to be touching something else instead.

“It is friends,” she says, “yes? The word.” She picks up a spoon and looks at it, looks up at Sarah, looks at the spoon again. Looks at Sarah. Smiles, limp and hopeful, smiles a dead girl’s smile across the table.

Sarah just crosses her arms and slouches in the booth, thinks: _no_. They’re not friends. They’re not family. This is just a way to get information, and then Sarah can get Helena out of her life for good; Sarah can stop looking across the table at Helena merrily slurping Jell-O and see herself and all the ways that she has been hurt.

“I dreamed that we were friends,” Helena says, a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth desperate and painful and fond.

“We’re not friends,” Sarah snaps. They’re not. They’re never going to be. Doesn’t matter how Helena looks. It doesn’t _matter_.

“We will be,” Helena says with the conviction of a truth, or like a secret that nobody knows. “I’ve seen it.”

**Author's Note:**

> The million-dollar word is _lyublenyy_ , which means _beloved, favorite, loved_. 
> 
> Title from Killer Queen lyrics, shamelessly ripped from [this Helena cosplayer's](http://liebscosplay.deviantart.com/art/gunpowder-gelatine-Helena-Orphan-Black-448182058) title. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please kudos + comment if you liked! Seriously, come talk to me about me making a basis for Helena's mimicry later; one of my favorite parts of this character is how she regurgitates things that other people have said to her/ways other people have acted to her, so a lot of Sarah's lines in this piece are slightly-altered versions of things Helena says later. _A face doesn't make a family/We make a family_ , anyone?
> 
> So yeah. Come talk to me. I don't bite. ;)


End file.
